The small copter Mercutioodon arrived on is a sports craft. I have flown them a few times, and often envied their maneuverability and speed. But it is not one with extra seats.

“Did you not think this through?” I shove my nerves away and try to keep my tone even instead of accusative. It’s a failure.

“I was in a hurry,” he trills in his own language. It is a good thing that I am fluent, as stress does make it harder for either of us to speak each other’s words. “We can make this work.”

“They are light,” the pilot helpfully provides. “I think we can take both.”

I look over my unexpected captive and agree, she definitely looks small enough. But I’m not. I pat my chest and look down at my much larger frame with significant concerns.

“Humans are dense, Troothasar.” Mercutioodon shakes his head, feathers all puffed out with either fear or in reaction to the cold night air. It is hard to tell.

“I am smaller than you,” the pilot offers. “The larger one can ride with me. Take the smaller one on your seat and we’ll be balanced.” He grabs hold of the frame of the small craft and I can see how the gears are turning in his head to try and make the calculations fit.

This thing had better be a high end model or we will not make it. Those electric motors are not something I want to put undue strain upon.

“I can fly it.” Troothasar nods and croons a low note for a word I do not recognize.

Mercutioodon blinks slowly, looking the gray pilot in the eyes with complete sincerity. A frightening moment passes between them and I wonder if they will leave the collaborator soldier behind even though she seems to have caught on to the dire circumstances we find ourselves in.

“Okay.” Mercutioodon helps the pilot into the straps that hold him in place and then waves me over. There is not an extra seat, and seats for Troo are not designed for human riders. The only place for me to sit is directly on this man’s tail. And I know that I am not a light rider.

I also know that the spinal ridge at the base of a Troo tail is a very sensitive erogenous zone and this pilot is basically consenting to some very awkward interspecies molestation. I am not comfortable with this information. But we do not have time for my discomfort.

I climb into the harness and let Mercutioodon tighten it down. I hold my weight up away from the pilot as much as possible by gripping the panic bars and holding myself up. I do not know how long I will be able to manage such a feat, but I sure am glad that I’ve never skipped arm day.

It does not take long from Mercutioodon to strap the inexperienced collaborator to the harness with him. Since he is not trying to control the complicated copter with foot pedals and twin sticks, he is able to strap her in on the seat in front of him. It looks much less uncomfortable.

The copter lifts off the ground before I even realized the pilot had it in gear. The buzzing of the propeller blades and whine of the stressed motor cover the sounds coming from closer to the buildings.

We rise into the air and I see two of the Troo anti-air guns pivot on their mounts to point directly at us.

The golden colored Troo standing on the balcony below them holds out one claw in an imperious gesture. Both of the guns remain silent, but track our progress across the sky.

“Where are we going?” I shout into the ruffled feathers of the pilot whose seat I share. I’m briefly unsure if he can hear me at all. And equally briefly concerned that he is not wearing any kind of hearing protection or helmet. I definitely feel safe with this man’s flying ability. He certainly trusts himself.

“Away.” And true to his word, this Troo flies in the direction that is best described as taking us “not here” and he does so at a patently unsafe speed. I do not recognize any of the landmarks we pass at all. This tells me that we are not covering any terrain that I have traversed in my courier role.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

It is dangerously dark. The night seems to swallow us whole in its cruel maw. The trees as fangs below us reach toward the copter and would absolutely take us down if the pilot so much as brushed a single one.

He does not. His confidence is well founded in his performance. The little copter skirts the trees with grace unbecoming its overburdened load.

I steal a look behind us. Somewhere in that cold black night, a bright flash of light blooms like a cruel flower. The horrible red light burns terrible shadows into the night ahead of us.

It is something I do not see often, despite the fact that we have been at war for half my lifetime.

It is an artillery strike.

The distance between our very carefully hidden artillery batteries and their target is long enough that there is a horrifying tension that lingers behind us. It is hard to tell if we have gotten far enough away. There is no way for us to replenish the supplies once they’re fired. And it is so easy for the Troo to track the artillery back to where it came from.

We have only just outrun the news of July’s demise.

Explosions in the distance flash bright enough to hurt my eyes and turn the ground below us into a brightly lit summer’s day. The noise catches up seconds later. The thump and roar of the massive explosions hitting their target rattles my bones.

The pilot’s shaking hands fumble at the controls, rocking the entire copter violently side to side. Still holding myself up with one arm, I reach down and place one hand on his shoulder. If it’s to steady myself with the difficult grip for trying not to crush him under my weight or a gentle comfort for him to help get control of himself, the intent does not matter. It’s effect is the same either way.

The copter’s flight evens out and speeds up. I hazard a glance in a backward direction.

It isn’t the compound we were just at that has violently been converted from habitable to inhabitable. It is instead the further away estate where Mercutioodon lived. Someone decided to lay the blame on the wrong Troo.

Or the right Troo. It would depend very much on what information they were working from to know what the thought process was. I suspect that Commander Chapel did know where the man who stole her daughter lived. Or at least, after July’s death, the incompetent mastermind would have confessed to everything he knew within a very short time frame.

Which means that the artillery crew must be currently hauling tail to get away from their position as fast as possible. It would be insane to stay put. Surely, Trooaris will respond.

I should not have been looking in that direction. I should have been paying attention to how fast the copter is still traveling. I should have noticed that neither the pilot nor Mercutioodon spared any backwards glance for the destruction of their home.

A beam of light like the finger of God lances down to the ground in the hills where the artillery had to have been when that horrible red light flashed across the sky. If the previous explosions turned the ground below into daylight, this is washes out the entire picture into white nothingness for a single heartbeat.

I hear screaming and it startles me to realize that it is my own voice. My eyes burn with pain and I turn quickly to face away from that horrendous vision. There is no way the artillery crew survived such a retaliation. There is no way for anyone to be left alive on the other end of that kind of firepower.

It has been a solid decade since anything of that magnitude has been witnessed out in an area as rural as this. We did not rate the kind of expenditure of energy that would have such a thing happen during the initial invasion. I haven’t seen anything like it since Dallas went up in flames out beyond the horizon, and that was just reflections of the barrage on the clouds.

The pilot cannot spare a hand from the controls, but his tail reaches up behind me and I feel it place a comforting weight on my shoulder. Its feathers are fanned out as wide as they can go, and I know that despite how hard they are to read by their feathers alone there is nothing that it could be except complete panic.

There’s no impact from the massive death ray from low earth orbit. There’s no giant wave of wind or pressure or anything that would mark its passing. There is only the light and then the immediate darkness.

The copter lurches uncomfortably as the pilot reestablishes his bearings. And then we’re moving again - faster. The electric motors whine in a very threatening fashion as we plow further ahead.

“That was a small one.” Mercutioodon’s voice rings out over the thump of the copter blades. “That was a limited area strike. That was not a full force attack. The satellite is in position and that was a small hit. That was tiny. That was not even-”

He keeps going, but I tune him out. The girl he holds in his claws vomits loudly for the second time this evening and I am suddenly thankful for the choice of a copter that does not have a floor.

If he’s right and that was but a taste test of the true Troo firepower from their native weapons - we were fools to ever believe we had a chance against them.